Do You Really Need Website Monitoring for Your Website?

A number of online entrepreneurs and website owners have realized the necessity of a quality website monitoring service to mitigate the damage caused by website downtime. There are still some, however, who wonder if they really need website monitoring for their websites. For example, those who operate and update blogs may wonder if website monitoring is really necessary for their website since they don’t make direct sales. Since direct sales are not an issue, they think downtime may not really affect profits to a significant degree. If this example is in line with your thoughts on website monitoring, there may be a few aspects of downtime that you are overlooking. Before you decide that a website monitoring service is not necessary for your website, ask yourself these three questions.

1. Is Your Site Monetized in Any Way?

Even if you don’t make direct sales, if your site is monetized in any way (such as through Google AdSense or other affiliate arrangements) then downtime can indeed affect the profits of your website. If your site is down or visitors can’t click on your affiliate links, your site can’t make money. Just as with a site that makes direct sales, any site that is monetized in any way will lose profits when downtime occurs. Just because your site does not make direct sales does not mean that downtime will not affect the bottom line of your site’s profitability.

2. Have You Invested In SEO?

If you have invested in SEO to attain high search engine rankings, chances are that the amount of time and money you have invested in SEO are quite significant. Unfortunately, frequent downtime or performance issues with your website can cause those search engine rankings to drop. If you aren’t monitoring the downtime of your website, you have no way to tell if your site is encountering enough downtime to hurt your search engine rankings, throwing all of those SEO efforts to the wind.

3. Does Your Site’s Image Matter to You?

If your site’s image and reputation matter to you, then you need to minimize any downtime your site may experience. For example, if your site is a funnel page and you are trying to get people to sign up for a product or service or you use your site to position yourself as an expert in your field, downtime is going to affect how professional your target market really thinks you are. If your site frequently malfunctions or goes down, it will be hard for visitors to take your site seriously and the reputation of your website (not to mention your own reputation) is going to take a dive. If image is important to the success of your site and your business, then the uptime of your website is just as important. This means that you need a website monitoring service in place to monitor any downtime your site may experience.

The Bottom Line

While some people may indeed be able to get away without using a website monitoring service, such as someone who just uses their site as a personal blog and doesn’t care about things like SEO, profits, or downtime, most of those who operate websites do so to profit from them. If you profit from your site in any way or your site is even indirectly related to your business’s profits, then you need to make sure you keep downtime to a minimum. The best way to do this is to ensure that you have partnered with a website monitoring service that will alert you the moment downtime occurs so you can go to work getting your site back up and running as soon as possible to avoid profit loss, SEO damage, and a hit to your reputation.